Guest Posting Tips for Bloggers

Guest posting is a great way to build your following, improve your SEO, get more links, get more traffic to your website, generate more leads, and make more sales.

Today, I want to educate you about the benefits of guest posting on other blogs and websites in your niche. I also want to share some helpful tips on how to write great articles and HOW to find and connect with other bloggers who will let you guest blog for them. Enjoy the training.

Here are the benefits of guest posting as I see it:

Free Marketing: It most cases, it doesn’t cost you any money to get your article listed on someone else’s website.

Builds Links: Every bloggers wants more high quality, inbound links. With guest posting, you can build high quality links to your website or blog, which can send you extra traffic.

Improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization): When done properly, the links can help improve your website’s SEO, which sends you more traffic, and gets you ranked higher in the search engines.

It Is Passive Marketing: You can do it one time and reap frequent rewards for many years to come.

Leverage Other People’s Traffic: Quite perhaps my favorite thing about guest posting is that you can leverage another blogger’s traffic, especially if you can find a popular blog to guest post on. One quality article on a popular blog can send you a tsunami of traffic.

On the other hand, here are the disadvantages of guest posting, as I see it:

Time Consuming: Guest posting can be very time consuming, especially if you do not enjoy writing articles. It takes most people minimum a few hours to write a high quality article, if not longer. What takes even more time is finding a successful blogger who will let you guest post on their blog. Most bloggers are very protective of their audience and won’t let just anyone do a guest post for them. In fact, most bloggers don’t even respond to requests for guest posts.

It Takes Time To See Results: It can take anywhere from three to twelve months to actually see results from the articles you wrote. This happens because it takes time for the search engines to index content and then show it in the search results.

When Done Incorrectly, Your Website Could Be Penalized By Search Engines: Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are consistently changing their algorithms. If their robots believe that you have no authority in the subject matter you are writing on, they could penalize you and your website. At one time, search engines favored guest posts and article directories, but since the major Penguin and Panda algorithm updates from Google, many links from guest posts are considered spammy.

So, what is the correct method in writing guest posts?

The Best Quality: A guest post is no time to give mediocre content. Write a first draft and edit it at least twice. Have a trusted peer review it and give you input. Have a professional editor proofread and edit it for you. Put yourself in the place of the blog readers; would you think it is great content? Or, would you just skim through it and move on? Your content should be EPIC. People should read your content and say DAMN, that was AWESOME!

Two or Three High Quality Links: Include two to three links to high quality websites in your guest post (other than your own website), which are relevant to whatever you are writing about.

Short Paragraphs: Keep your paragraphs at two to four sentences each, if possible. While your English teacher in high school may not agree with that, we live in a fast paced world. People want to read short paragraphs, because long ones are hard to follow.

Long Posts: While this may seem like an oxymoron in comparison to #3 (which it is), the old system of keeping posts at 500 to 600 words has vanished. Most popular pages on the internet today are anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 words.

Include Photos: Include a few ORIGINAL photos in your guest post. You might even want to include an info-graphic. People love pictures. Do not steal other people’s pictures.

Cite Your Sources: If you have performed a lot of research to develop the blog post, and you are installing statistics, theories and studies, be sure and cite your sources. Just put a reference section at the end of the article and use links.

Write a Great Author Bio: Make sure your author bio stands out. Include a photo of yourself and ONE sentence about yourself. The rest of the bio should be a marketing message. Provide a link to your own website that is relevant to whatever your guest post was about. Do not talk a lot about yourself in the bio. Instead, use good copywriting and tell the person exactly what you want them to do. Send them to a capture page, your about me page, or your newsletter sign up page.

How to Find Guest Posting Opportunities

The final thing I want to talk about in this article is HOW to find guest posting opportunities. This is quite perhaps the biggest challenge for most people. As I mentioned earlier, most bloggers are VERY protective of their audience and won’t just let anyone do a guest post on their blog.

Even worse, many webmasters and bloggers don’t respond to inquiries or even have a way to contact them on their website. It’s as if they want to hide behind their computer.

That being said, here are some simple things you can do to find guest posting opportunities in your niche.

1. Leave Comments: The first thing you can do is leave comments on the blog you want to guest post on. Become a frequent contributor. Provide value in the comments and make sure your writing is high quality.

2. Offer Them Something First: Remember that most people think about themselves and want to know what’s in it for them. Before you ask someone to do something that will benefit you, give them something for free or do something nice for them. One example would be to link to their blog from your blog.

3. Look for Blogs with Guest Posts Already on It: Another simple thing to do is look for blogs that have a bunch of guest posts by different authors. Obviously, these bloggers are open-minded to the idea.

4. Build a Relationship: Even in a digital age, relationships are still important. In most cases, people would rather do business with someone they like, know and trust, than someone they don’t know at all. It takes time to build relationships, but it’s worth it. Send the person a note in the mail, a personalized email, maybe even a small gift.

5. Call the Person: If you can find the blogger’s contact information, give them a call. This is a quick way to stand out in the crowd, since most people send emails rather than call people.

6. Look for Up and Coming Blogs: It’s a lot easier to find a small time blogger to guest post with than someone who has a blog with millions of monthly visitors. Look for high quality blogs that are still fairly new and don’t dominate their niche yet. Look for blogs with great content that are still building up their following.

The Bottom Line

Here is the bottom line. You can generate a boat load of traffic with guest blogging if you write high quality articles and focus on popular blogs. You won’t see overnight results, but once your articles get indexed and found, you will have a steady passive traffic generation stream that sends visitors to your website month-after-month.

Here are several other great articles about guest blogging you may want to read:

I would also like to tell you that guest posting shouldn’t be your own only marketing strategy or primary marketing strategy, but it should be part of your overall strategy.

What are your thoughts? If you have experience guest posting on other blogs or let people guest post on your own blog, what tips can you recommend? What has your experience been like? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you.

6 thoughts on “Guest Posting Tips for Bloggers”

Great post Chuck! I have often thought it would be fun to be a guest blogger. I wrote my own blog for years about my family and really enjoyed it. Guest blogging is a great way to have fun, get your name out there without the time commitment of running one full time.

As a person who has provided guest posts from time to time, and also had others guest post on my website, I can say there can be a huge advantage in several ways. It builds a person’s online reputation if they are writing quality posts. It creates back links to their website which can be great. It also give material that can be used in the person’s portfolio.

I have learned not to expect a lot of visits from the back links immediately, but over time people do click through to see the person’s blog. Guest posting can be a win-win, and some blog owners even pay people to guest blog.

This is another instance in which the advice can apply to small business owners or other means of online marketing. A well-placed guest post, not only drives traffic but also creates relationships within the industry which one works. Links to ones point of sale are also vital. I don’t know how many times I have seen guest posts with no links. No kidding.

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